


A Soft Touch

by perrysian



Category: Les Misérables (2012)
Genre: Cuddling, Gen, Hugging, Platonic Relationships, touch starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-27
Updated: 2013-02-27
Packaged: 2017-12-03 18:55:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/701534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perrysian/pseuds/perrysian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grantaire is a touch-starved, depressive drunkard who needs a lot of love and attention so whenever he goes to see a prostitute he asks for hugs and cuddling more often than sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Soft Touch

**Author's Note:**

> For the kink meme prompt: http://makinghugospin.livejournal.com/11667.html?thread=2695571#t2709651
> 
> Unbeta'd.

Desperation sent Grantaire down to Montmartre in a haze of bitter wine and fresh tears, the street wet and slick beneath his boots with the light rainfall. At least no one can tell he’s crying as soaked through from the long walk as he is. At least he got out of Café Musain before he let the effects of Enjolras’ words show through from behind the walls Grantaire built so carefully between his soft parts and the rest of the world.

Grantaire thought he’d built them high and thick enough as not to be so hurt by the barbs of others, but Enjolras had a habit of bursting through his barricades, reaching deep into Grantaire and affecting his heart. Grantaire had hoped to keep himself protected by cutting himself off from others, emotionally and physically, but it only left him shattered with no one to reach out to.

So he came to the thin streets of Montmartre, beneath the shadow of the hill at the center, for the companionship he had nowhere else to turn for. He came out this far, where no one knew him, the small farms further out already asleep for the night.

But he didn’t come for the farmers; Grantaire wiped his face before approaching the women standing beneath an overhang. They were comely enough, he supposed, but their attractiveness wasn’t the primary concern.

Grantaire went along with the first that approached him, a girl around his age with soft blond curls and small brown eyes. He startled a bit when she went to her knees and undid his trousers, but began to harden under calloused fingers, cold from the night outside.

He sighed and rested his hands on her soft shoulders, goose bumps rising on pale skin beneath his palms, her mouth hot, tongue deft and delightful. The harder she tried, the more frustrated they both became because he only remained at half-mast. Grantaire still shook with misery and shame when he pulled away from her.

“I’m sorry,” he muttered, laughing thickly when he started to cry again. “Can’t do anything right today it seems.” He tucked himself away as she stood.

“Are you alright?” she asked, wiping his cheek with her thumb. He leaned into her hand, not able to help the action.

“No. I’m lonely, I suppose.”

Grantaire was surprised when she wrapped her arms around him, holding him tightly. He fell into her embrace, an embarrassed flush rising to his cheeks.

“Sometimes,” she murmured into his ear. “Sometimes a body just needs holding.”

They seemed to stand pressed together an eternity, and slowly, inch by inch, Grantaire calmed. His skin felt less like it was too small for him. His breathing evened out and he felt as though he wasn’t about to fly apart at the seams, the buzz in his head fading.

Much more stable than before, he pulled away from her. “Thank you.”

“Do you still want me to-?”

“No. That’s alright,” Grantaire paid her with a small grin. “You gave me what I needed.”

“I’d be happy to do it again, if you need me to.”

Grantaire nodded. “I might. What’s your name?”

“Giselle. Just ask for me from the girls if I’m not about when you come by.”

And so, Grantaire did. When he ached for human contact and a kind face, he went to Giselle of  
Montmartre. Until the night she was ill and not about, the he when with Marie, and older woman with a kind face and evident backbone.

When Grantaire shyly told her what he wanted, she asked him, “Are you and invert?”

“No? No. It’s just- with Giselle-”

“Are you the one from the city? R-something?”

“Grantaire, yes.”

“Giselle mentioned you might be by. Come on then, love, on the bed.”

Grantaire lay down awkwardly. Ignoring his skittishness, Marie just pulled his upper half into her lap, and started stroking his hair.

“What’s all this about then, darling? Surely, there’s a reason for all this fuss.”

“What do you mean?” Grantaire closed his eyes, enjoying the feeling of her warm hands massaging his scalp.

“You come to this piss-end little town for hugs from whores. You haven’t got anyone to hold onto you in the city?”

Grantaire swallowed around the lump in his throat. “No. I don’t have anyone.”  
Marie wiped his eyes, shushing him softly. She didn’t ask him anymore questions, and he was grateful for it.

She refused payment when they were finished, telling him, “You’re a good lad. I won’t begrudge a boy some love, stranger or no.”

He laughed and kissed her cheek before taking the long walk to his empty room in the heart of the city; a city full of people, all behind their own walls, unreachable to him.

Grantaire kept going back to the lovely ladies of Montmartre, as often as he was able, and occasionally when he wasn’t. They forgave him for it. Soon enough it was more than Giselle and Marie. A woman older than Marie, Victoria, would cradle him close to her and sing to him. Camille, only a year older than his own sister, would curl up at his side and they would read to her son together, their voices ringing out at the exciting bits. Charlotte would let him complain about Enjolras to her in whispers, her quiet advice sticking with him even as he chased the bottom of a bottle days later. Her own inverse love, Lucille, would giggle into his neck at his tales of what new diseases Joly had diagnosed himself with or what Lesgles had broken lately, sending Musichetta tearing after his hide.

Grantaire loved them, and grew to prefer their company over the polite tolerance of the revolutionaries at his favorite café, so much so he would leave in the middle of their meetings, ignoring the calls of Jehan and Courfeyrac after him.

As paranoid as they were, however, he should have expected them to become suspicious of him.

Grantaire didn’t. Nor did he expect them to follow him all the way out of Montmartre one night.

It was Bahorel and Combeferre who burst in on him, Lucille, and Charlotte cuddled together on the spare hay bed, Lucille midst a peel of laughter, Grantaire along with her until their sudden appearance, choking him off with painful suddenness.

When he led them back outside, the ladies looking onward with shrewd eyes, Grantaire knew he had some quick explaining to do.

In the end, Combeferre believed him; Bahorel not so much.

“You could have come to us.”

“No, I couldn’t have.”

“We’re your friends.”

“No. No, you’re not.”

“I have to tell Enjolras something.”

“Tell him the truth.”

“And what is that?”

“That Grantaire is living down to expectation and spends his time amongst prostitutes whenever possible or affordable.”

“That’s not precisely it.”

“It’s enough. I’ll keep away for a while either way. Let the paranoia pass over. The Corinth will likely still have me.”

Combeferre shook his head at him, but left all the same with Bahorel back to the leader they all three loved, but who only love two in return.

Grantaire swallowed back tears as Charlotte and Lucille led him back to their bed, the laughter from before dead in his chest as self-loathing rose.

He slept in the bed of whores that night, and it was still the sweetest rest he’d had since he was a babe in his mother’s arms.

*

Grantaire was a man of his word; he stayed away from the Café Musain, but spent is time in a pub a few blocks from the Corinth. He didn’t want to be found so easily by those who had so quickly distrusted him. If Grantaire was going to be lectured by Enjolras, he was going to make him work for it.

It took a fortnight for Enjolras to track him down, either from limited time to do so or disinterest in finding him, but it didn’t back his fire at all when he was found.

“Where have you been?” Enjolras demanded as he threw himself into the seat across from Grantaire.

“I’ve been here.”

“You said you’d be at the Corinth.”

“No. I said I’d keep out of the Musain. I only mentioned the possibility of going there.”

“I’ve been looking for you for days.”

“You could have waited until I returned to the café.”

“Can you swear to me you would have returned?”

Grantaire didn’t answer. Instead he paid his tab and left the pub; Enjolras followed.

“Why did you stop coming to the Musain?” Enjolras asked him softly.

“I thought you’d have been pleased not to have me ‘constantly underfoot like a dog slow to die’.” Grantaire let himself revel a bit at the flinch he received from throwing Enjolras’ words back at him. “This way you can’t plan your little revolution, and I can ‘drink myself back into the gutter’.”

Enjolras shook his head. “I shouldn’t have said… any of what I did.”

“Was any of it not the truth? At least to you?”

“Of course not! I didn’t mean-”

“Don’t! Don’t lie to me. You never say anything you don’t mean. You, Apollo, have a great reserve for terrible cruelty, but you’d always kept it contained to when it was needed. I never thought you’d use it just to watch me squirm.”

“I’m so sorry, Grantaire. There’s no excuse.”

“No. There isn’t. I haven’t come back, Apollo, because I have enough reasons to hate myself. I don’t need you to add to the lot.”

They stood in the middle of the quiet street, face to face. Enjolras reached out to Grantaire.

“Come back. Please.”

“Tell me one thing.”

“Anything.”

“Why did you have me followed? Do you really distrust me so much to think I would spy on you?”

Enjolras only looked confused. “What? That’s not why we followed you, Grantaire.”

“Then why?”

“We- I was worried. You were acting so strangely. You’d be fine for a little while, but soon you’d go quiet and try to drown yourself or than you usually do, only to disappear for hours and then be alright again.”

“Sexual frustration will make a man somber. Not that you’d know.”

“But that’s not why you go to them, those women.”

“How do you know that? Combeferre told you?”

“No. I was there.”

Grantaire turned from him, running a hand through his hair. “Had a good laugh about it, then,” he spat. “Pathetic Grantaire, no one loves him so he seeks out whores for affection.”

“No! No. Grantaire, look at me.” Enjolras took hold of his shoulders and turned him around. Grantaire kept his eyes on their shoes. “Please.”

Enjolras cupped his chin, gently lifting his face up. “It wasn’t funny that you felt you had no one to hold you when you need it. That you think we aren’t your friends.”

“Tolerance isn’t friendship, Enjolras.”

“We care for you more than that, Grantaire.”

“Really?” Grantaire challenged him quietly. “Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Then why would you say those things. Why did you purposely hurt me, Enjolras, when you know how I feel?”

“I don’t know. You- The waitress was flirting with you, and I got so frustrated… It- I lashed out, and I’m sorry.”

“I love you, Apollo, but a lot of the time I don’t like you.”

“I don’t like me either, sometimes.”

“Let me go.”

“Will you come back with me?”

“No.”

“Then I can’t let you go.” Enjolras wrapped his arms around Grantaire, holding him close even as Grantaire tried to pull away, his arms trapped between their chests. He struggled for a few long moments before giving it up.

“I don’t want to go back there.”

“You do.”

“And have my heart stepped on every time you’re fed up with me? No, thank you,” Grantaire protested, but kept relaxing further into Enjolras’ embrace, his body betraying his need even as his chest ached with well-known hurt.

Enjolras only held him tighter. “I can’t promise I’ll never hurt you, but I can promise I’ll never send you away. I can promise I’ll hold you when you need it, and hold onto you when you don’t.”

“You don’t love me.”

“I’m not in love with you, but I do love you. I care for you.”

Grantaire gave in and fell into Enjolras entirely, arms circling the other man’s waist. “It’s enough.”

Enjolras kissed his temple and waited for him to pull away before taking his hand and leading him back to the Musain where their friends were waiting.

Enjolras’ hand was soft in his own, as it would remain every time Enjolras curled their palms together, until the very last time in July.


End file.
